


Blood

by storiesaboutvan



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Bruce Banner and F.R.I.D.A.Y. are mentioned but aren't part of the plot, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Nightmares, She/her pronouns for reader, Stark tower is still a thing, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, a little angsty, descriptions of body decomposition, descriptions of death, do you like ghost stories?, god I LOVE Shuri, infinity war and endgame NEVER HAPPENED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22183996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesaboutvan/pseuds/storiesaboutvan
Summary: Bloody Mary; a ghost who appears in a mirror when called by name three times.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Y/N, James "Bucky" Barnes/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission to @waiting4inspiration’s Myths, Folklore and Legends writing challenge! Hope you love it, Jess!
> 
> Please read the tags for warnings!

Bucky Barnes doesn’t believe in ghosts. In this day and age, it’s more likely that a ghost is just a loved one brought back to life. Reanimated to fight on the wrong side, kind of thing. Or maybe the ghost is a clone. A hologram. A science experiment gone wrong. If you are lucky, the ghost could simply be a hallucinatory symptom of brain disease. But, no matter what, there is always a scientific explanation.

Bucky Barnes doesn’t believe in ghosts because the existence of them implies the existence of an afterlife, some sort of potential of God. Of meaning and purpose. If he thinks about that too much, he unravels. So, he chooses to not think about it.

Bucky Barnes just does not believe in ghosts, so when he sees you standing behind him in the bathroom mirror, he runs straight to Steve.

“Something’s wrong with me,” he blurts out.

Sam and Steve look up from conference room B’s table. Case files are open and spread across the room, spilling down onto vacant chairs and placed in chronological order on the carpeted floor.

“Gonna have to be more specific, Buck,” Steve replies, eyebrows furrowed.

Sam considers making a joke, but there’s a darkness splashed across Bucky’s face that warns him away.

“I'm… They… I don’t think they got everything. In my head,” Bucky tries to explain.

“What happened?” Steve asks, pushing away from the table and assessing Bucky’s body language. He’s cagey, almost afraid.

“I saw… someone… She’s dead. She’s dead but I saw her,”

“Happens a lot around here, man,” Sam offers.

“It’s not like that. I was in the bathroom. She was in the mirror,”

“Like, _in_ the mirror?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head, annoyed but aware that he’s not really helping them help him. “No… I was shaving and…” He tried to think. What exactly happened? When did he notice you standing behind him? There was blood…

…

_The small cut would heal before he left the bathroom, with only the few drops of red blood in the porcelain sink left as evidence that he’d been distracted enough to cut himself shaving at all. You’d been in his head again. The nightmares had started on the day that would be your birthday._

_Somewhere in the middle of being The Solider, the people around him made the mistake of not seeing him as sentient. They spoke around him, conversed and told secrets to each other, thinking he couldn’t understand. That’s how he learnt about your arrival at the facility. Your name. Birthday. Power._

_Bucky had nightmares about a lot of things, but you were often there. Sometimes you were centre stage with your sad eyes and painful defiance. Sometimes you lurked in the shadows, having being taught by The Solider how to do it so well. Nightmares and restless sleep were synonymous with being an Avenger, a hero. It was a high price, but Bucky considered himself to be in enormous debt._

_The blood in the sink reminded him that he was still there, alive, human. He watched it slowly seep downwards, sighing out loud to himself. “Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head and trying to move the haze from his head. “Y/N,” he said, then stopped. Your name had slipped through his lips straight from his unconscious. It didn’t sound quite right. “Y/N,” he tried again, adding another sigh like it was the last syllable of your name._

_Bucky looked up, studied his reflection. He wondered what you’d think of him now._

_“Happy birthday, Y/N,” he whispered, his attention returning to the razor and shaving cream._

_The bathroom light flickered, freezing Bucky entirely. Without moving, he glanced out the open bathroom door. The hallway outside was still. He couldn’t recall if the light had flickered out there too._

_He felt it then. He wasn’t alone._

_His eyes moved fast, up to the mirror. You were there._

_Sad eyes. A strange fragility despite being possibly the most dangerous thing in Stark Tower. Alive._

_He bolted. The razor clanked into the basin and the bathroom door slammed shut behind him._

Steve… Find Steve, _Bucky thought._

_“There’s something wrong with me.”_

…

“We talked about this. It’s normal to se-”

“It wasn’t like that,” Bucky interrupted Sam.

“We can look at the CCTV. I’ll ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. to-” But Steve was cut off too.

“She’s dead, Steve. There’s no way… She’s dead, alright?”

“I would have said the same about you,” Steve softly tried to reason.

Bucky could vividly remember what it felt like to lose you. He chewed his lip and crossed his arms across his chest. “I watched her die. She… she died in my arms and nobody came for us for three days. Alright? She was dead in my arms for three days.”

Sam and Steve glanced at each other.

“Okay… Okay, Buck. I’ll talk to Shuri. See what we can do,” Steve agreed.

“If I’m- I’m seeing shit, I should be-”

“Come on, man,” Sam stopped him, moving to hold his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky felt the weight of each of them differently. “If you’re seeing shit, you’re like every other vet out there. Something’s wrong, we’ll cross that bridge. Ain’t no use walking around all gloom and doom… We need a break anyway, right, Steve? Let’s go get some pizza.”

…

In Bucky’s nightmare, the three days turn into a week. Then longer. He sits as still as a statue in the corner of a boarded-up room of an old snowed-in cottage. It’s a Hydra safe house, and it contains the bare essentials to keep someone alive. Not you though. You’re too hurt. It’s bad. There’s so much blood. He can see your insides and shoving everything back in and holding his jacket hard to the wounds isn’t helping.

You cough up blood as you watch The Solider panic. It’s rare to see any emotion, so you feel grateful in your final moments. When you die, The Solider shuts down, like a computer malfunctioning. Hydra would have to do one hell of an ‘alt ctrl delete’ when they finally come for him.

It’s cold, which is good. But you’re an open corpse, which is bad. The blood hardens and turns dark. He can smell your organs as they begin to decompose. The whites of your eyes turn a sick colour, but The Solider never tries to close your eyelids. If he does that, he’s alone. The inside of your mouth goes darker and darker, and the weight of your body on his continues to change.

In reality, that’s about when Hydra arrived. Any longer and you would have started to fall apart very literally. In his sleep though, that’s exactly what happens.

Your body begins to bloat, small blisters appearing along the surface of your skin. Parts of you liquify, find their way out, soak into The Soldier’s clothes. It happens slowly at first, then within dreamstate minutes your muscles and organs and skin tissue turn to goo. Sometimes The Solider just sits in the human muck, counting the teeth left behind. Sometimes he’s frantic, scooping you back up and trying to hold you together; it makes it worse.

And, although he hasn’t seen a single fly in the safehouse, there are hundreds of maggots infesting the deepest cavities of your body.

When Hydra came to claim their property, The Solider fought back. He clawed and kicked to get you back close to him. He screamed your name in every language he knew. That’s where the memory stops. Often too, the nightmare.

“Y/N,” Bucky whines in his sleep, almost sounding like he’s drowning in sticky, syrupy blood. “Y/N!” It is louder the second time. “Y/N!” Bucky yells, shooting up in bed and almost tearing a pillow in two.

He tries to breathe in, but the air is icy cold. Bucky only then notices the door. The balcony door is open. And you are standing there, hair moving in the breeze. Suddenly the room is bright, and warm palms are dragging his head to face away from the balcony.

“Buck?! Buck, are you okay? You’re screamin’ again,”

"Yeah, yeah,” Bucky replies, pushing Steve’s attempts at emotional first aid away. “Just a dream… nightmare… whatever.”

He looks back for you, but you are gone.

Steve stands and watches Bucky crawl out of bed and move across the room.

“You hate the cold,” Steve laments, concerned.

“Did you-” Bucky goes to ask, but stops himself too late.

“You saw her again, didn’t you?”

…

Wakanda is beautiful. It’s the closest thing to peaceful Bucky’s ever known. Before making his way to Shuri, he visits old friends. The goats don’t seem to remember him, but the children promise the White Wolf that they do. They show Bucky how well they’ve been caring for the goats, and they show him all the things they’re learning in school. They ask if they can be Avengers too. He smiles sadly, and tells them, “Not yet.”

“Ah! Bucky Barnes! My favourite broken White boy!” Shuri greets while pulling Bucky into a hug, then immediately focusses on his left arm. “So, your boyfriend says you need a check-up?” she asks as she opens a panel and frowns.

“It’s not my arm, Shuri. That’s workin’ perfect,”

“Of course it is!” she laughs, yet doesn’t stop tinkering. “But there can always be more. Be better.”

When Bucky fails to reply, Shuri studies his face, then nods. Softly, kindly, she says, “Come, my friend. We’ll have tea.”

Shuri is easily one of Bucky’s favourite people. She listens, which is already more than she has a responsibility to do. Bucky knows she’s just a kid, but he also knows better than to stop a kid with that much genius and tenacity.

…

When all physiological and psychological avenues have been explored, Shuri shrugs at Bucky. “Maybe she’s real,”

“She can’t be,” Bucky replies quickly.

Shuri makes a face. “ _You_ , of all people, really gonna stand there and say it’s impossible for the dead to come back?”

“She was… _very_ dead,”

“The dead are never truly gone, White Wolf. Not really.”

…

Bucky hasn’t seen you in a couple weeks. Sam says to him, “Two’s only a coincidence, man. Three times, then we’ll worry, yeah?” But Bucky remains worried nonetheless.

The mission they’ve been preparing for, the one that has taken over conference room B, is on Bucky’s mind. He finds Steve sketching away, curled into an armchair and looking a lot smaller than he actually is. For a second, Bucky almost catches himself missing the 1940s.

“I shouldn’t go,” Bucky declares, dropping to the floor in front of Steve, back resting on the armchair and head falling back.

Steve looks down at his friend. “Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do… But you are okay, Buck…”

Bucky looks up at him, exposed and vulnerable. Slowly, he shakes his head. “If I see her again while I’m meant to be focussed… I don’t wanna screw anythin’ up,”

“Okay. Sit this one out,” Steve replies, brushing loose strands of hair out of Bucky’s eyes. “But you gotta promise to be here when we get back.”

…

The floors occupied by the Avengers are quiet. Bucky’s almost alone, save for F.R.I.D.A.Y. and Banner who is basically living in his lab. Bucky doesn’t ask why he’s not on the mission, and Banner returns the favour.

The irony isn’t lost on Bucky; he haunts the spaces he shares with Steve, silent and invisible like a ghost. Part of him is waiting for you, he knows. The other part is genuinely terrified in a way he hasn’t felt in decades.

He kills a few hours in the pages of a book, then finds himself lingering outside the door of the bathroom.

It’s a little past two am when he gives in, stands in front of the mirror and closes his eyes.

“Y/N?”

He listens.

There are sounds but none of them you.

“Y/N… I… If you’re there… alive… I’m sorry…”

His voice is shaky and he feels stupid, but he’s started and now he can’t stop.

“I’m so, so sorry… I… tried. I tried but I couldn't… And we were… If you’re here, if you’re here, please… just… Are you still…? Are they still out there?”

Bucky can’t collect his thoughts. Each shatters into ten more, then those explode into even more, until there are hundreds of unanswered question in a web of confusion and emotion.

“Y/N…” Bucky’s voice cracks.

It hurts you to hear.

You listen to his uneven breathing, listen as he tries to calm himself, hold back tears.

Bucky stands up straight, stretches out his neck muscles. He opens his eyes.

Those stormy blue-grey eyes.

“Hi,” you say as softly as you can.

There is a split second where Bucky almost turns, an automatic movement, but he stops himself from spinning and stays firmly planted where he is. He’s afraid that if he moves, you’ll disappear again, like you had before.

“…Hi,” he replies.

“You know my name… My real name. I didn’t know that you knew it…”

Bucky nodded, slowly. The Soldier had never called you by your name while you were alive, just like you had never said 'Bucky.’

His blood gets pushed faster and faster around his body when his heart rate increases. The top of his cheeks flush pink.

“I know your name,” Bucky says.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me, my fics, and my many Bucky/Reader writer recommendations on Tumblr at @buckyreaderrecs.


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